‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, Russia will teach you. And if it does not, then ask me for a lesson. Now I excuse myself.’ And giving me a stiff little nod, full of suppressed emotion, she departed.
I told myself uneasily that she was nothing but a spiteful, jealous woman; but still, I wondered. What or who had made her jealous? How could it be Rose Gowrie? It did just cross my mind, then, that she might have been in love with Peter.
Inevitably such thoughts remained unresolved. They did not disappear – but to whom could I put questions at once so pointed and so vague? Certainly Dolly Denisov, although apparently approachable, never seemed to say anything I could settle on. But Mademoiselle Laure’s observations stayed with me; and then, once or twice, I caught Dolly herself looking at me with a strange appraising scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Ariadne and I drifted away our days in conversation, visits to other splendid houses, and walks. I had instituted the Scottish ‘afternoon walk’ and Ariadne, although at first doubtful, now enjoyed the habit as much as I did. But we seemed to have no purpose and no direction in our life. I told myself that it was very Russian, and that this was how I must expect it all to be.
I had plenty of time at my own disposal when Ariadne was taking her music lessons, or singing, or learning dancing with the French dancing-master, or taking drawing lessons; she did all of these things, one or two of them brilliantly, none of them regularly. Madame Denisov had waved a vague hand when I asked permission to explore the library and the picture gallery.
The library was a lofty, dark room filled with ancient volumes in Russian, French and German, as well as offering a smaller library of Greek and Latin texts. Of these books no volume seemed later in date than 1840. English literature had a section all its own and was mainly made up of novels. Dolly Denisov had a very representative collection of English light fiction, and I spent quite a lot of my free time there, gratefully reading my way through a number of delightful authors like E. F. Benson and Elizabeth, Gräfin von Arnim, which poverty had hitherto kept from me.
The picture gallery was a long, tunnel-like room filled with dark portraits of fierce-looking soldiers and ladies dressed with an air of fashion and expense that suggested Dolly Denisov was running true to form. They were a dull lot and, except for certain slight differences of dress, could have been found, perfectly at home, at Jordansjoy. But at the end of the gallery were three or four strange pictures that exploded with colour and light. A scene of water-lilies in a pond, a plump woman sitting at her dressing-table brushing her hair – these were two of them. Another was a country scene, but so angular, bold and bright that I had never seen anything like it. Yet another was of a girl dancer resting on a chair, her face in repose plain and spent, and yet she was an object of great beauty.
Just beyond this group of pictures was a door. One day, out of curiosity, I opened it. Behind the door was a small hall, and leading out of it a heavily carpeted staircase going straight up into the wall.
I went to the foot of it and stared up; I could see nothing because the staircase curved sharply. A scented, murky, musky smell hung over the stairwell, as if fresh air never reached it. I wondered where it led, but on that day something unwelcoming, even slightly sinister about the stairs, kept me back.
But the place fascinated me and I kept thinking about it. The next time I was in the gallery I went again into the small foyer that led to the red-carpeted stairs. This time as I stood there, I heard a movement behind me. One of the servants came through the door bearing a heavy silver tray on which were covered dishes.
I was beginning to speak a little more Russian by now, and at any rate I could ask a simple question and generally make out what the answer was.
‘Where does the staircase go?’
The servant – he was old and grey – stared without answering. Then he said: ‘Ah, the sacred staircase,’ and crossed himself as if he meant cursed rather than sacred. Later I came to observe that the servants, like many an oppressed minority, often used a word in the exactly opposite sense to the way they really intended it. In secretiveness they found both protection and defiance.
He said no more, but went on up the stairs and out of sight. On that thick carpet his feet made no sound.
I knew now that someone lived up the staircase.
The silence of the household about this unmentioned inhabitant began to oppress me. The mystery worried me. I thought about it at night, those pale nights, and when I was not dreaming about Patrick I dreamt about the staircase.
One quiet afternoon while Ariadne was at her singing lesson and Dolly Denisov out upon her own concerns, I entered the foyer from the picture gallery and crept quietly up the stairs.
The staircase wound up and up in three curving flights. No wonder no sound had floated down to me at the bottom. Ahead of me was a solid oak door with a polished bronze handle. I opened it.
I was on the threshold of a large, dark room, curtained and lit by lamps although the afternoon was bright. In the middle of the room was a great state bed of gilded wood, heavily decorated with swags and carved fruits and little crowns, and hung with rich tapestries. In the bed, propped up on cushions, was an old lady, before her a bed-table spread with playing cards. She raised her head from her cards at my entrance, and stared. Then a radiant smile spread across her face, and eagerly she held out her hands. She said in English: ‘At last you have come. I always knew you would.’
I had never been in such a room before. It was so shut-in and artificial that I felt the outside air could never penetrate at all. Over the window were heavy, plush curtains of deep red, and over these were layers of muslin, draped and pleated in elaborate folds. On the floor was an ancient Turkey carpet whose very redness seemed to suck up what air was left in the room after the endlessly burning lamps and the great stove had taken their share.
I stood on the threshold, shaken by my reception, and not understanding it.
The old woman in the bed and I stared at each other. Then she gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Come in, girl, and don’t stand there staring.’
Slowly I advanced into the room, vaguely conscious of great gilt mirrors on the wall uncannily reflecting everything in the room, making every image smaller and clearer than in life: gilt furniture, the old lady in the bed, the lamps, and the girl at the door who was myself, a girl in blue-and-white spotted silk, her face with bright puzzled eyes.
‘Come on, come on.’ The voice was imperious. ‘Come right up close and let me have a look.’
Obediently, as if mesmerised, I came right up to the bed and let her look at me. Her hand came forward – dry and cold it was on mine, glittering with diamonds. Age had shrunk and discoloured it until it looked like a little brown animal’s paw.
Her face was old, older than anyone’s I had ever seen. At Jordansjoy we thought of Tibby as old, but she was not old like this. This woman looked as if she and the last century had grown old together. I saw a thin, lined, wrinkled face, cheeks bright rouged, and neck and forehead powdered white. Diamond earrings sparkled at the ears, and a great pearl necklace dangled from her throat. Out of this painted, ancient face stared a pair of dark, keen eyes. But every so often heavy lids fell over the eyes, turning the eye-sockets into dark pits which made her look dead already. It was a disconcerting trick, due, I suppose, to a weakness of the muscle beyond her control. Yet I came to suspect that she used her weakness to intimidate.
‘Good,’ she said again; her voice was almost a whisper, a ghost of what it must have been. ‘I am pleased with you. You have the right look. Genuine. I knew I should be able to tell. At my age a skin peels from the spirit and one senses things at once. But you kept me waiting. I even began to think you had not come.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I said, flummoxed.